Can we use Web Driver instead of this?

[marcoscaceres]

I wonder if there is a way of removing a lot of the Chrome (and webkit) specific code in the utils by making this use Web Driver BiDi instead?

It seems weird to hook into testing internals... it feels like Web Driver would solve for this.

[alcooper91]

Hey Marcos,

The intention of this spec is to serve as an API for a test interface in WPTs to mock out a fake device so that we can control that to validate expected behavior on a page. (E.g. "If the world looks like this, what values do we get back from a hit test"). I don't think anything precludes you all from using WebDriver yourselves, and in fact this seems like more of an issue on the webxr-utils.js file that's checked in with the WPTs? If that's the case, I'm not sure where is the best place to file an issue like that, but I think it's beyond the scope of what this repo is intended to be.

[alcooper91]

That being said, if you feel there's some simpler way to do this than we currently have implemented (which I thought also ran in WebKit?) I'd definitely be interested in trying to simplify things; but I don't have much bandwidth to make a large Chrome-side change like that at the moment.

[marcoscaceres]

We could maybe to something collaborative here: w3c/gamepad#224 ... we have broad agreement on how to do this with general gemepads, so maybe this will help.

[AdaRoseCannon]

I'll set up a joint meeting with Web Apps to discuss this.

[alcooper91]

From chats with @cabanier, it's also my understanding that WebDriver isn't working on Android very well.

[marcoscaceres]

Related, but unrelated, could someone review?: 🙏
web-platform-tests/wpt#58320

[marcoscaceres]

Over in Web Apps, we have this first draft of an Web Driver API for gamepads:
w3c/gamepad#224

Could we combine forces here?

[alcooper91]

Can you clarify what about the current spec makes it so that WebDriver can't be used or what needs to be different to allow WebDriver to be used? My impression/our intention here is that it's up to the individual browser vendors how they implement this API and we just provide a common path to discuss it. Again, if your issue is with the webxr-utils.js file, I'm not sure there's a better place for that discussion, but it's not really relevant to the spec.

Further, if certain of our UAs won't be able to use WebDriver (e.g. anything on Android), that's going to probably be a non-starter for us for cross-compatibility. Happy to bring this up for discussion at one of the Immersive Web meetings, but trying to clarify what the concern here is/what the actual proposal would be/what the blockers are to that from a spec persepective.